Ward Blondé

The last book in my Homeric Traditions series has finally been published: The Ionian Epsilon Tradition: Homer’s finishing touch. This book also contains an updated and improved overview of all the 776 oral characteristics that belong to one of the 25 oral scopes that I reconstructed. They can be found from page 175 to 198. All the oral characteristics, oral scopes, and passages can also be investigated in xlsx format (een Excel file). This “Homeric Traditions Apparatus” can currently only be downloaded on Academia (by clicking “Download PDF”).

The book about the narrative Delta tradition has a dual target audience: first, the layman who likes to read unique fairy tales that – according to the theory in this book – stem from Central and Eastern European warrior clans from the Bronze Age. For them, there are the anger of Achilleus, the abduction of Helen, and the compassion of Achilleus, stripped of the overloaded presence of Greek oral traditions. Second, the scientist who wants to distinguish the narrative Delta tradition from other oral traditions in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey by means of 158 Delta characteristics. The scientist and the interested layman also learn how Odysseus has grown over the centuries from a herald – the Bronze Age diplomat – to the cunning hero who endures the most dangerous adventures on his return journey to Ithaka.

Like the European Beta tradition, the narrative Delta tradition stems from a society of clans fighting each other to the death on the battlefield. They burn their dead, place the remains in urns, and cast burial mounds above them. Their strongholds are surrounded by ramparts of wood and earth and a ditch. All this points in the direction of proto-Celtic Europe of the Bronze Age, in which the funeral customs of the Urnfield culture merge with those of the Tumulus culture. Chariots and horses sacrificed on the funeral pyre point in the direction of the nomads in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.

The Gamma-tradition is a Homeric oral tradition that developed in the Greek Dark Ages, when Aeolian Greek settlers colonized the region around Troy. Rather than a historical War of Troy, the mythologization of the new homeland was responsible for the stories around Troy and the Trojan Cycle. Curiously, the Aeolian Gamma-tradition is also connected to the Greek colonies in Italy. Roman mythology and the Aeneid of Virgil appear not to be based on Greek mythology and Homer in general, but more specifically on the Aeolian Gamma-tradition. Furthermore, there are the influences of several often-international story types, such as the destruction story, the tele-story, the monster story, and the savior story. The intertextuality of the Aeolian Gamma-tradition in Homer, the Trojan Cycle, the Argonautica, Vergil, and the Old and New Testament is investigated. For example, the Christian practice of baptizing seems to derive from an oral characteristic of the Aeolian Gamma-tradition, namely immersing a body in a river or in the sea.

The European Beta-tradition is now also available in English (2019 April 21). It is published by Brave New Books and it can be downloaded for free as a PDF on ResearchGate and Academia.

The European Beta-tradition is the second in the series of five Homeric oral traditions that I discovered in the Iliad. In contrast to the Mykenaian Alpha-tradition, the Beta-tradition has its origins in the proto-Celtic Europe of the Tumulus and Urnfield cultures; it describes a society of clans who fought each other to death on the battlefield. The European Beta-tradition is so realistic and varied in its descriptions that it must have originated in a warrior culture.

My discovery of the European Beta-tradition provides insights into the Homeric question about the origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey and into European prehistory. The framework of the Iliad as a whole appears to be an age-old narrative originating from the Central European Bronze Age. In addition, I present a theory that explains the presence of the European Beta-tradition in Greece. In doing so, I shed light on the mysterious issues of the Sea Peoples, the movements of the Urnfield Peoples, the fall of the Mykenaian Empire and Hittite Empire, the destruction of Troy, the invasion of the Dorians and the Dark Ages in Greece.